


chromatic

by aerynlallaboso



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9614465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerynlallaboso/pseuds/aerynlallaboso
Summary: Battle lines are drawn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> short n sweet for femslash feb :*

The lock in the car's door lights up. It pulses gently purple, a beacon against the overwhelming grey of the afternoon drizzle, and the colour matches the hair and eyes and lips of the woman who has just materialised in the passenger seat.

 

"Wow," she says. She stretches, rubs herself against the leather seatback like a cat. "You don't skimp on your creature comforts, do you?"

 

"How did you get in here?"

 

Rain falls on the windscreen, forms streaks of light and colour on the frosted-over glass: the outside, viewed through the tails of a hundred tiny raindrop comets. The woman smiles. "I've been here all along. Waiting for you. I know your routine when you're in town." She sits up straighter. "Breakfast - an English-style muffin and a boiled egg - at 0500 hours. Then morning workout. You report to the military compound on the edge of the city at 0630 for daily briefing, inspection of the new Tier-One mechs as a consultant with battlefield knowledge, maybe sign some autographs. Out at 1300 hours for lunch and a visit to the local shelter to play with kittens, then-"

 

"I get it," Zarya interrupts her, hands clenched in her lap. She has no weapon. Against the woman in her passenger seat, slim and lithe, thin throat protected only by folded leather, she would not even need one.

 

"You should tape over your webcam when you get home, amiga. Or not. The view this morning was spectacular." A bright purple eye flutters closed, then open, and sharpens. Nobody has eyes that colour. They must be contacts, shaded for effect to match her outfit and dyed hair. "You know who I am."

 

She does. The dossier contained no photograph, but nobody else could be sitting where this interloper is at this moment. A shadow, the image of a sugar skull left on wiped databases and hacked mechs, a wraith who murdered all of General Volskaya's guards and yet left her untouched. Such a person could easily find themselves an entrance to the heavily armoured locked car that was provided to Zarya by the military, for her protection.

 

The windows are reinforced glass and bullet-proof plastic. Even she could not break them. "You also know who  _ I _ am."

 

"Of course I do. I know-" A pause, but a deliberate one. The pale teal neon glow of the gym's sign through the window casts an ugly refraction on her purple palette. "Many things. Some of that knowledge I even acquired honestly."

 

"Then you know that I have orders to take you in. You are wanted for crimes against this country."

 

Of course, she does. A wanted criminal does not lock herself in a car belonging to the woman assigned to catch her without that knowledge. If it were anybody else, Zarya's thoughts might turn to assassination, but why show up in person? A car bomb would be simpler. And she did not kill General Volskaya.

 

The woman crosses her legs. Sombra - real name unknown - says, "And do you know what those crimes are?" She is confident of Zarya's ignorance, poised, one hand under her chin, to deliver the answer. Zarya feels a sudden rush of hatred for her.

 

"Only in broad. I trust General Volskaya when she tells me that you are an enemy of Russia. Thus, an enemy of mine."

 

"Of yours? Mmm. We've only just met, Aleksandra Zaryanova." Her accent slips and slides along the hard angles of her name, turns them into curves. "You might like me once you get to know me."

 

"You work for Talon."

 

Oddly, this puts her off-guard; the gleam in her eyes dims. She tuts. "I work  _ with _ Talon. There is a difference. For example, if I worked  _ for _ Talon, Katya Volskaya would be dead, and so would you." She gestures around the interior of Zarya's car: dead, military-issue black broken by the custom brown-leather seats and windows covered with watery condensation. "None of this would stop my friends from putting a bullet in your brain. They don't know that I'm here."

 

Now they come to the crux. "Why are you here?" Zarya asks - no, demands.

 

"I am here because I'm hoping that you and I can come to some kind of arrangement, Ms Zaryanova. Zarya, they call you?"

 

"An arrangement."

 

"A deal." Sombra's violet-tinted nails drum a meaningless pattern on the dashboard. The sound blends with the rain outside. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. There are many things I could do for you and your country - help you avoid further Talon attacks on your facilities, for instance. Talon has developed weapons technology that might be of great interest to your military engineers. Or if you prefer, a wonderful addition to your personal armoury."

 

"I do not have a personal armoury," Zarya says, and Sombra's gaze sweeps over her bare biceps, her body carefully constructed from fat and muscle to imbue her with the strength of an oxen. Her body is her armoury; her body is her weapon.

 

Sombra must know that. She says, "There are other groups, nations who possess weapons more advanced than Talon as well. All that could be at your fingertips. Russia's fingertips." It is a sales pitch, and not one enthusiastically delivered in contrast to her banter mere minutes ago. She is searching for a weak spot with brute force, not the sharp delicacy her whole demeanour - and her dossier - suggests she prefers.

 

Zarya comes to a realisation.

 

"If I agree to your deal, then my part in it would be to leave you to your activities. Am I correct?"

 

"That's right," Sombra says, almost affectionately, like a teacher praising a child who has solved a difficult maths problem. "You call yourself off. I'm sure you can think of some reason I keep on eluding you. I'm very slippery."

 

"I would never agree to such a thing."

 

A sly smile. "Not even with everything I have to offer you? You don't have to decide now. I can give you some time to think it over, say a day, two if you need it-"

 

Zarya places a palm on the plastic that divides the two front seats and leans a little toward Sombra. To her credit, her expression does not change. "You are a blackmailer," Zarya says. "A blackmailer and a spy. That is your mode of operations as your file tells it, and I see only one reason for you to change it for me."

 

"Oh?"

 

The scar through her eye prickles. "You have nothing on me."

 

The smile on Sombra's lips changes; it morphs from condescending, saccharine, to pure and genuine glee. It confuses Zarya. She has met criminals like Sombra before, people who tease and confuse with banter, pretend to be friendly up until the moment they turn sour when the balance of power shifts from them to her. The balance of power has just shifted, but Sombra smiles as if it has now made them equals.

 

"Not  _ yet _ ," she says, in her strong accent. Had they met elsewhere, Zarya might have found her voice charming. "But everybody has secrets. Everybody has things that they would die, or kill to keep buried. It's only a matter of time before I find yours."

 

"You can try." The hatred she felt so briefly for Sombra has dissipated in an unexpected tide of adrenaline: the rush of meeting a worthy opponent on the battlefield. "Unless... you wish to give yourself up? That would be an arrangement I could agree to. There is no need for a game of cat and mouse."

 

Sombra purses her lips in a silent 'oooh', and then she reaches over and taps the side of Zarya's nose, quick as a whip. "Where's the fun in that?"

 

She expects Sombra to vanish the same way she appeared - in a stream of hexagonal particles, produced by a device of some sort elsewhere. Instead, she presses the lock. It disengages, turns a soft green. Sombra swings her legs out of the car and steps onto the pavement.

 

As the door closes, she kisses her hand and tilts it to Zarya. Her mouth forms an 'o' again. Raindrops land on her bottom lip, and then she is walking away down the street, past the gym where Zarya does her afternoon workout and further until she, a purple blip, has disappeared into the overcast city.

 

This meeting will have to be reported to her superiors. To General Volskaya first of all. There will be a debriefing, plans of action made, surveillance footage of this street inspected, her car crawled over for specks of Sombra's hair or sweat. Battle lines have been drawn here; Sombra has made her loyalties, if not her intentions, clear.

 

To her irritation, Zarya finds herself smiling.

 


End file.
